Bishop Stephen Zondo’s defence team, led by advocate Piet Pistorius, continued with the cross-examination of a state witness in the rape trial at the Pretoria High Court.
This after the court called on a new state witness to take the stand on Monday. The witness is the husband of one of Zondo’s alleged victims.
Zondo, the founder of the Rivers of Living Waters Ministries in Johannesburg, is facing 10 charges including rape, indecent assault, and defeating the ends of justice.
It is alleged that Zondo committed the crimes from the 1980s until 2018.
The witness informed the court on Monday that after a Sunday church service in 2018, he and his wife were approached by a church leader who said he had been instructed to summon the wife to Zondo’s office.
The witness revealed that he had no reason to question or doubt Zondo, because he joined the church when he was still a teenager.
After the meeting at the bishop’s office, said the witness, his wife came out with puffy eyes as if she had been crying. “I asked her if everything was fine [and] she said we need to go home,” said the witness in his testimony.
Zondo allegedly kept phoning the man’s wife but she refused to take his calls.
This continued into the following morning when Zondo allegedly called the husband and, assuming the pastor wanted to speak to his wife, he passed her the phone.
But she waved her hand in refusal.
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa.
